Israel says it intends to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank,
a territory that decades of failed negotiations
said was supposed to make up part of the future state of Palestine.
To annex land is to add it to one's own territory by appropriation.
But while that's an obvious loss for Palestinians
it might not be so good for Israel, either.
Since we're talking about land here, let's do a quick recap
of how things got to be where they are.
On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its statehood on 78% of the land
that until that day, had been Palestine.
Eventually 750,000 Palestinians
living there were forced out.
Meanwhile, the remaining parts of Palestine - Gaza and the West Bank -
fell under the full control of their neighbors.
In 1967, Israel occupied those territories too,
fully controlling historical Palestine, and the millions of
Palestinians who live there.
While the Palestinians who were able to stay behind in 1948
eventually gained Israeli citizenship and certain civil rights,
Israel decided that the Palestinians in the territories it occupied in 1967
would get nothing.
They would remain stateless.
Israel didn't want the people in these territories -
just the land.
And it began building Israeli-only settlements there.
Now that's a war crime under the Geneva Conventions;
You can't move your civilians to live on occupied territory.
It's always been a process of
gradual and increasing
land aquisition and appropriation.
You know, with this slowly placing
a hold on bits of ever-growing territory to extend their
political control over the land
and, of course, doing so
at the expense of the indigenous
Palestinian population.
In order to control the West Bank and Gaza
and build settlements,
Israel has maintained a violent military occupation.
Since 1967, the Israeli army has
confiscated Palestinian lands,
arrested over 800,000 Palestinians,
demolished more than 50,000 Palestinian homes,
seperated people from their families and livelihoods,
and killed thousands.
Palestinians have no say in the Israeli policies
that take their land and confine them to smaller areas.
In 1988, the main Palestinian
leadership agreed to the
idea of a two-state solution:
Israel here, and Palestine here.
After signing a treaty in 1993, the Israelis and Palestinians spent years
negotiating on how to make this two-state solution happen,
and then more years negotiating over how to restart negotiations.
But here's the thing: During this entire period, Israel continued
to build illegal settlements on the land being negotiated to become
a future Palestinian state.
Today, more than 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank
in massive settlement blocs that break up big chunks of the territory.
And now Israel is planning to annex those chunks, along with the Jordan Valley
that make up the West Bank's eastern border.
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
has described this plan as a
"chance to write another glorious chapter in the history of Zionism."
And even though taking territory by force is illegal under international law,
the plan is popular with many Israelis.
But there’s also a lot of opposition.
Palestinians obviously don’t want more of their land being taken,
and the UN Secretary General
had this to say:
If implemented, annexation would
constitute a most serious violation
of international law,
grievously harm the prospects of a
two-state solution,
and undercut the possibilities of a
renewal of negotiations.
Even some settlers are against it – but for a different reason.
They worry that annexation means they won’t be able to build
more settlements in the remaining West Bank,
and that Palestinians might finally get a state there.
Many pro-Israel Democrats in the U.S., like Chuck Schumer, Bob Menendez
Nancy Pelosi and dozens of others, are also opposing this plan.
Look, annexation is not going to kill
the two-state solution. The two-state solution has long been dead.
What it is going to do now though,
is make it impossible for people
to pretend that the two-state solution
is still a viable option. And this is something that allowed them
to not confront the reality of their
complicity in the situation on the ground.
The fact is, for Palestinians living in these areas, little will change.
Their land has effectively been annexed by Israel for decades.
They need Israeli permission to travel, to build homes, to trade with the world,
to create infrastructure. They're policed by the Israeli military,
and have no civil rights or say in the government that controls their lives.
Life under military occupation is a
situation where there is a total
absence of freedom. A total inability to live one's life, to plan your future,
a real inability to control the basics of your life.
To travel freely in and out of your country, to go to the airport,
to travel for school, to travel for work, to visit family members,
things as simple as reaching
your job on a daily basis.
In fact, Netanyahu has confirmed that even after formally annexing these lands,
any Palestinians living there will continue to be denied civil rights.
The world has to seriously confront
the situation of apartheid.
And apartheid has a definition
under international law.
It's a situation where you have one group that is, through the process of
systemic human rights abuses,
dominating and controlling another group.
And there's growing support today,
particularly among a younger generation of Palestinians, for an outcome where
you have one state with equal rights
for all people.
That's why annexing the West Bank could end up backfiring on Israel.
Palestinians may give up on the two-state solution and start demanding
equal rights in one state.
Israel would face more pressure than ever
to give the millions of Palestinians living in
the territories it occupies civil rights for the first time.
The international community has to
confront the question of apartheid or equal rights.
There are really no remaining options
after that.
This might just be another chapter in the almost 80-year long
Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
but the precedents set here could lead to countries annexing territory
in different parts of the world.
The Israeli government feels confident it can annex this land without consequence
because the Trump administration is the first to signal its full support
for such a move.
Trump has already recognized Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights,
and by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem,
he’s gone against decades of U.S. policy
by effectively recognizing Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem too.
But with so much opposition coming from so many different places,
why would Israel want to go ahead with this plan?
The question isn't why would Israel
go ahead with this,
but why wouldn't
the Israelis go ahead with this?
There's been, times where the international community has said,
don't do this, don't expand here,
don't do this to the Palestinians
and so on and so forth,
but it's never followed
with accountability.
So from the perspective of the Israelis,
why wouldn't you just keep taking and taking
more Palestinian land
until there is accountability?